Why do so many combat veterans turn to mountain climbing?

That’s a photo of vets who climbed Grand Teton on 9/11/11. By Stacy Bare Best Defense mountaineering correspondent "Why do you climb?" The question, in some form, was posed to George Mallory on a trip to New York City in the 1920s, as to why he was interested in climbing Mt. Everest. At the time, ...

"Why do you climb?" The question, in some form, was posed to George Mallory on a trip to New York City in the 1920s, as to why he was interested in climbing Mt. Everest. At the time, Mt. Everest remained the last great geographical unknown and great epic adventure since the poles had been "conquered." His response was flippant: "Because it’s there." Myself an aspiring mountaineer, I used to love that response, but I’m not sure if it tells the whole truth.

I routinely find myself day-dreaming about snow and cold. I want to be in the ice floes. Struggling up broken granite and route finding in blustering winds for an opportunity to stand on top of a mountain for a few brief moments before the elements and pesky possibilities like cerebral or pulmonary edema set in. I’ve done it a few times in the United States with other veterans, and its always a life-changing experience. But do I want these things simply because they are there? Did Mallory really? Or was what drove Mallory and his colleagues at the time the same thing that I think may be driving me, an OIF veteran, and a new generation of adventurers and explorers outdoors and into what is left of our global wilderness?

Do I, like Mallory before me, and no doubt countless generations of warriors before him and after, climb because, like the nameless 24 year old demobilized in March 1919 who applied to be on the first Everest Expedition, "feel stifled" in civilian life and following demobilization? Do we seek adventure to recapture the sense of purpose, mission, and camaraderie we may have found in war?

Let’s be honest, there were parts of war that really kicked ass. It was fun. I’ve never had an adrenalin rush, even in taking a 20 foot dinger off a rock face or hucking myself off wind cornices in winter, like I did on a few days in Baghdad. I love the way a mountain smells in the early morning after a big powder dump, staring down into the silence and open canvas of unblemished runs. But how much better the smell of cordite and silence following a successful combat operation? To be fair, I think my war was also fun in a way that World War I most certainly was not.

Still though, one can hardly doubt the boredom and drollness of life post World War One when veterans returned and the military was drawn down. Speaking to a crowded room following the end of the War and trying to gain interest for the first Everest expedition, Wade Davis, in his excellent book, Into the Silence, about why World War I vets became mountain climbers, explains the scene:

But his eyes were drawn to those in khaki, perhaps thirty or more scattered through the audience, soldiers like him who had endured the slaughter, the coughing of guns, the bones and barbed wire, the white faces of the dead. Only they could possibly know what the vision of Everest had become, at least for him: a sentinel in the sky, a place and destination of hope and redemption, a symbol of continuity in a world gone mad. (P. 87)

How to explain all of that when someone asks why you climb? Or why you fish? Or why you go outside? We’ve done enough for our country not to have to respond with anything more than, "because it’s there." Its there, and it’s the best medicine for you and as a warrior class, we’ve been doing it since World War One, and really, we’ve been doing it as long as we’ve been coming home from war.

Life after war is boring. And that’s ok, but we can do something about it. We don’t all have to go to Everest, but Mallory and his generation painted a clear picture of what we can do to overcome much of the paleness of life outside of uniform. Get outside and just like you would not leave a warrior alone on the battlefield, make sure you don’t leave a warrior inside!

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. @tomricks1